​Traditional Hierarchy Makes Way for Employee Engagement

Author

Employee
engagement has been one of the hottest topics in the region. Organizations have
spent tremendous amounts of effort to innovate and maintain high engagement. Beyond
the employee survey, in more dynamic and vibrant work environments, HR leaders are
working on how to connect with their employees and to effectively convey key messages.
Bo. H Kristensen, Korea General Manager and Yo-Han Lee, Korea Head of HR at
Lego Korea, hosted ChapmanCG and around 20 HR leaders to discuss “Maintaining
High Engagement in Dynamic Work Environments in Korea”.

Changing leadership behaviors

Engagement is
about creating positive changes in behaviors and then sustaining them. But
everyone in attendance agreed that it’s easier said than done, especially when
cultural norms can make bringing about change difficult. One company shared a
case that looked into the root cause of their engagement issues. In Korea, organizations
are known for their hierarchy, which means mindset changes that will lead to
positive behavioral changes must first start at the top. So this organization collected
feedback from various channels and organized a focus group that helped them realize
they needed to ease up the pressure and tension by educating managers to respect
employees’ working hours and facilitating bottom-up communication that encourages
continuous discussions.

An interesting
topic that also came up for discussion was power harassment. It might not be on
the agenda of some countries in Asia-Pacific, but certainly, it can have a
negative impact on employee morale. At times, some leaders are not aware that
their management styles are too demanding and or that their requests are beyond
certain subordinates’ scopes. But everyone was hopeful that these types of
issues can be resolved through ongoing training and coaching.

Engagement successes

How can organizations
encourage employees to engage more? One Korean company shared their two successes:

Flexible work arrangements

First,
they started to promote flexible working hours so employees can go to the
office and work according to their schedules and needs. While everyone agreed
that a program like that largely depends on the nature of the job, implementing
this was seen as a positive step for Korean companies.

Internal job mobility

Second,
they encouraged employees to apply for internal opportunities. (A participant
noted that the organization had to be large enough to make this possible.) Individuals
were able to apply for different roles anonymously and managers were not
allowed to stop them if they were presented with an offer. This created some
internal tension; however, it increased the competitiveness of business units
and showed a commitment to employees.

While these two offerings are
common in most Western organizations, they are still somewhat new in Korean
businesses.

In summary, most
organizations agreed that engagement had to begin with leadership behavioral
changes, which would ultimately foster an environment of open and continuous
communication, and that would lead to sustainable employee engagement—and
ultimately lead to increased innovation.

Here's what participants had to say

The meeting gave me a lot of insights.
Participants were exchanging sincere questions and answers on employee
engagement. It was a very practical discussion when compared to other
similar community meetings.

William Shin, HR Director, Philips

It was a great opportunity to exchange best
practices from different companies. I again realized that there’s no
one-size fits all solution when it comes to the people agenda.

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